Today Google, along with HSBC and a few other investors, helped place an order for 16 low-orbit Thales Alenia satellites to begin the push for a massive broadband deployment in Africa and beyond that it hopes will help connect the 3 billion people in the world who are currently webless. It's a noble plan, with quite a long ways to go. Google and their partners threw in $60 million out of the required $150-$180m into the kitty of O3b Networks (the other 3 billion, get it?), the firm established to launch the satellites and manage the initiative. A satellite downlink is of course only the first step in setting up a fresh broadband network, but the company also has plans to convert mobile phone towers into multipurpose high-speed network nodes, which when complete is estimated to cost $750m all told. Google says it will help drop the price of broadband by up to 95% in some places where it's a rare commodity. When the satellites are launched in 2010, that's one step closer to 3 billion more new Googlers, looking at AdSense ads all the way, of course. [Financial Times via /.]